Event Information

Date and Time

Location

Description

As a key member of football’s safeguarding cohort, we cordially invite you to attend ‘Keeping football safe and enjoyable’, a gamewide safeguarding conference. It will be held at The FA’s national training centre at St. George’s Park (Burton-upon-Trent)on Wednesday 27 September.

We want to bring football’s network of safeguarding professionals together to reflect on everyone’s tireless work to date – and to set a robust course for the future.

The conference will comprise a series of guest speakers from all aspects of safeguarding – all with insights and experiences to share. Speakers will include representatives from the NSPCC, Operation Hydrant, Dr Elly Hanson, an independent clinical psychologist retained by The FA who specialises in the field of abuse and trauma and input from a survivor perspective.

There will also be time set aside for networking and group work, and for you to get to know and spend time with safeguarding colleagues.

Although football has long had stringent safeguarding checks and processes in place, this is the right time for us to gather as one team. That’s because since the allegations of child sexual abuse came to light in November 2016, the lead football bodies havereviewed their safeguarding checks and processes.

As a result, football has re-doubled its efforts to ensure every child and young person has a safe, fun experience playing or participating in the world’s most popular team game.

So now is the opportune moment for us all to regroup and reflect, ensuring that we are all fully up to speed with the game’s work in this area, and equally importantly, to have your input on areas that could be further improved.

That’s because safeguarding demands our constant vigilance and professionalism and as we all know is about continuous reflection and improvement. Our collective work will never stop.